A cloaked and hooded figure came climbing down from the rocks behind their prison.

"Hi!" the stranger said cheerfully, pushing back his hood. "I say! That was rather close, what?"

Derian gaped. The stranger was Edlin Norwood.

Elise saw the expression on Derian's face. Something in the redhead's astonishment cut through the numbness that had seized hold of her soul when she realized what the bandits intended for her and made her able to speak again.

She smiled. "Edlin!"

Sir Jared echoed her. "Edlin! Cousin, what are you doing here?"

"Glad to see me?" the bright-eyed young man said with a broad grin. He might have been meeting them on a dance floor rather than a battlefield.

"Definitely," Jared replied. "But how did you come to be here?"

Edlin scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot, suddenly a boy expecting to be reprimanded.

"I heard you talking to my father," he said defiantly, "about Lady Melina and what Firekeeper was going to do. I wanted to help but I knew you wouldn't have me, so I followed along, what?"

"Did your father know what you were going to do?" Sir Jared asked incredulously.

"Not really," Edlin said. "I told him I was going out to train some of the dogs for tracking in the snow, that I'd be out a couple days. I think he was peeved because I was supposed to help with the house party, but he doesn't really want me marrying any of those girls so he let me go.

"I went," Edlin continued, taking a deep breath, then speaking all in a rush on the exhalation, "and then I left the dogs with Race Forester. He wanted to come with me, but I wouldn't let him. He says 'Hi'

though. Anyhow, I left a note for my father and told Race not to deliver it until I'd been gone three days.

Then I hied after. Tracked you, you know, but didn't let you know I was there."

"I'll say we didn't!" the knight replied.

Elise noted that Jared now looked torn between amus.e.m.e.nt and anger. There was something else thereas well-envy? Elise wondered if she'd read him right.

"I knew," Firekeeper said a trace smugly.

She had been pawing through the bandit corpses to find her Fang and was now strapping the knife back into place.

"I knew," she repeated, "but I no say. I think it funny."

The wolf-woman looked suddenly uncomfortable.

"Now I don't." She gave a stiff bow. "Thank you, Brother Edlin."

Edlin bowed to her in return, a gallant, sweeping gesture that couldn't quite hide the foolishly adoring expression on his face.

Elise, who had been dreading another suitor-Sir Jared, undeclared as he was, was almost too much, especially given how she was feeling right now-swallowed a guilty giggle.

She hadn't realized that Edlin was besotted with Firekeeper. No wonder he'd known his father wouldn't let him join their company. Given Edlin's impulsive streak, he'd doubtless already asked his father for permission to wed his adopted sister-and been soundly refused.

A warm affection for this romantic spirit-an affection she most certainly would not have felt if he were pursuing her-came into her heart. Elise welcomed it all the more as it did something to press back the numb terror that flooded back into her when she recalled how close...

She shivered, hiding it in a brief bow-an odd feeling, but her riding breeches made a curtsy seem ridiculous-to Edlin.

"Thank you for saving us," she said softly. "I don't know if we could have escaped without your help."

"Oh, I don't know, what?" the young man said, but it was clear from the color that rose to his cheeks that he was pleased. "Firekeeper's friends weren't sitting on their haunches waiting for me to save the day.

You might say we had the same idea."

"How did you plan?" Derian asked. "Did you talk to them?"

Edlin shook his head, removed his bow from where it had been slung over his shoulder, efficiently unstrung it.

"Nope. I just followed their lead. I figured they could get the closer ones, but not the guy coming at that cage, so I went for him. You know the rest."

"I guess we do," Derian said, looking around at the corpse strewn area. "And thank you. I was wishing I could do something-I don't know what I would have done..."

Elise saw a memory of desolation in Derian's eyes and realized for the first time that she and Wendee had not been the only ones to suffer.

Surprisingly, Edlin looked ashamed.

"I should have found some way to stop them before they caught you," he muttered. "I'm really sorry you had to go through all of that."Sir Jared, on whose face Elise now recognized a trace of the same shame and desperation, clapped him on the shoulder.

"You did what you could and it's all right in the end."

He, too, scanned the open area.

"The question is what do we do now? Move on or take shelter here for the night?"

Wendee Jay, who had been staring at the b.l.o.o.d.y field as if at a revelation of truth, spoke one word.

"Go."

Derian-more practical or perhaps more schooled in the realities of war-glanced up at the angle of the sun.

"There's nowhere to camp between here and well on the other side of the pa.s.s. I was counting on having time to inspect that pa.s.s and then make plans. We won't have that option. I'm afraid our best choice is to stay here."

"With all these bodies?" Wendee asked tremulously.

"We move them," Firekeeper said with the a.s.surance of one to whom all dead bodies are nothing more than meat. "No bodies. Elation see a rock hole to drop into."

Sir Jared gave an ironic smile. "Doubtless that 'rock hole' is where many of the bandits' own victims were buried. I think that's an appropriate grave."

Derian nodded. "I'll join the burial detail as soon as I check the horses and mules. The bandits were rough on them and Blind Seer's howl didn't help."

"It did!" Firekeeper exclaimed indignantly.

"It didn't help the horses," Derian clarified with the seemingly infinite patience he kept for the wolf-woman. "It certainly helped us. Doc, Lord Edlin-could you help Firekeeper? Wendee and Elise can see what shape our supplies are in and maybe see if we can eke out our own supplies with the bandits.' "

Elise was glad to have a task to do, anything to keep the memory of her own fear away. That fear bothered her almost as much as the possibility of rape had done. She had always imagined she would do better in a time of crisis-in the war she had even managed to do the ugly work of a surgical a.s.sistant though she had thought she hated the sight of blood.

To have become a huddled, sobbing chit ashamed her, and as she flushed at the memory, she remembered something else.

"Wendee," she said softly as they hurried to where the bandits had dropped the goods stripped from their animals near the fire-doubtless for inspection after...

Elise hurried her thoughts away from that.

"Wendee," she repeated, "I didn't thank you, I want to thank you..."

"Think nothing more of it," the older woman said almost curtly. "I'm glad I didn't need to go through with it.""But, what you did was so brave," Elise persisted.

"Was it?" Wendee asked. "Or was I just more afraid of the waiting?"

"I heard what you said to Derian," Elise said firmly. "You were brave. I'm going to tell d.u.c.h.ess Kestrel when we get back to the North Woods-and I'll reward you myself. I have..."

"Don't," Wendee said.

She knelt down next to one of the mule packs, fumbled to open the straps with hands that trembled despite the heat of the bonfire.

"I don't want to remember," Wendee continued, "and a fuss would make me remember. All those plays, all those poems, all those grand stories of heroism. I never realized that no matter what they did-all those people I admired so and tried to be-I never realized that inside they were likely near puking their guts out from fear."

Elise wrapped an arm around Wendee's shoulders. She felt the other relax slightly and only men realized how tense she herself had been.

"At least you stood on your feet," Elise said, not letting a trace of bitterness or self-pity touch her voice, "like one of those heroes. Not like me. I think you can still face them with pride."

Wendee stared blankly at her, then began laughing shakily.

"Well, if I ever go back to the theater," she said, unbuckling the strap, "I'll play those parts differently. Or maybe I'll stick to comedy."

"Oh, I don't know," Elise said, working on another pack, "I sometimes think that what happens in those stories is only funny to those of us watching from the outside. I'm not sure how funny it would be to live."

"True," Wendee agreed. She took a deep breath, then surged on, deliberately practical. "This pack looks in pretty good shape. I think we can trust that the bandits were being careful until they saw what goodies we had."

Elise nodded. "Let's take a look in their shelter. It's going to be a bit gruesome going through their things, but..."

"We won," Wendee a.s.serted firmly. "Any law of the land would say that it's our right."

"I wonder if the law's the same in New Kelvin?" Elise said thoughtfully.

"Who cares?" Wendee replied with a shrug. "No one's around to ask. We'd better get going. Cleanup is moving along pretty fast."

Elise caught a glimpse of Firekeeper and Blind Seer dragging a rather large body across the rocky ground. Firekeeper had hold of the man's shirt; the wolf had his jaws clamped through a shoulder. They moved like a team in harness, the wolf trusting the woman to see behind him.

"I wonder if she knew," Elise whispered. "What they were going..."

She couldn't make herself finish the phrase, didn't need to. Wendee shook her head.

"I hope not. There's an innocence to her-b.l.o.o.d.y hands and all-an innocence worth preserving. Let's not explain."Quickly, as if she needed a change of subject, Wendee said: "I've been thinking over what you were saying about how a comedy would feel to those in it, living the events. It reminded me of something my first teacher told me, something from Lazarralo Denisci's writings..."

When the burial detail returned, the goods scavenged from the bodies wrapped in an old cloak, they found the two women seated by the fire. They were heating up bread and beans from the bandits' store and discussing drama theory with a concentrated intensity that defied interruption for any other matter.

Only Firekeeper was puzzled, but she was so often puzzled by human ways that she dismissed this last as just one more mystery.

Chapter XXV.

Theirs was a meeting of bullies-of strong men who used that strength unmercifully to control those weaker, but who also were willing, almost eager, to surrender to the control of one stronger than themselves. Such a desire to surrender is at the secret heart of most bullies-but does little to comfort those they pound to submission.

Longsight Scrounger was not the lord of the pirates. Indeed, it was a matter of debate whether that legendary personage existed. What Longsight was was a good sailor, a better pilot, a mean hand with a sword or club, and, finally, a man possessed of a talent-a singular skill for finding things. Longsight could find fresh water, a lost piece of jewelry, sometimes even something as vague as the best path or a safe cove.

Had Longsight not been a bully, he might have become a dowser, a wealthy man honored throughout the Isles and perhaps beyond, but Longsight craved power more than he did respectability. Among the pirates, his gift gave him a slight edge. Those stronger than him valued his talent as an intangible a.s.set, worth cultivating even if they despised the man. Those weaker than him feared Longsight not only because of his own not inconsiderable strength, but because the looming shadow of those others who considered him a tool difficult to replace.

The arrangement was one that satisfied Longsight perfectly and he came to the room where Waln sat up in bed to meet him with the equanimity of one who knows he has the upper hand and will enjoy using it to deliver a beating.

Waln Endbrook had learned to hide the bully beneath a veneer of fine clothing, beneath his ownership of a merchant fleet, beneath the influence money can buy, but he had never ceased to be a bully at heart.

His wife, Oralia, knew that-fearing and loving him as only a willful woman broken can love. His servants knew that and worked harder to avoid his wrath.

His children had yet to make the discovery, for Waln doted on them and punished his servants rather than his darlings. Someday they would learn, however, and a new battle would be joined. Waln might even end up the loser, but that day was long in the future.

For now, Waln hardly thought of his children, his wife, his money and influence. When he did he thought of them as things at his disposal, extra fists with which to batter his opponent. Although he knew enough of Longsight Scrounger to respect him, he also trusted in his own strength.Longsight might have sensed this as he strolled into the sickroom, for the c.o.c.ky greeting he'd intended-a clever bit about Waln having survived the fever maybe just to give their hangman a bit of practice-melted on his lips.

Instead he hitched up the chair, spun it around, and sat backward, with its ladder back between him and Waln. He asked much more neutrally: "So, how are you feeling?"

"Weak as a kitten and sour as vinegar," Waln replied, which was neither completely true nor completely false.

Certainly he wasn't himself-no man could be who'd traveled the distance he had half-fed and poorly clad with winter freezing his bones by day and by night. Still, he'd lived hard enough as a youth to know that a couple of days' good feeding and rest and he'd be himself again.

There was no advantage to telling Longsight that, so Waln contented himself with a faint, self-deprecating smile.

Longsight, feeling more confident, grinned at him.

"So, how'd you end up like that? Last time I saw you, you were riding high and mighty with a n.o.ble lady at your side."

Lady Melina's name, unspoken, rested like a threat between them. There had been no way to keep her ident.i.ty from the pirates, not with her daughter kept among them and her with that d.a.m.ned gemstone on her forehead.

Waln hadn't worried. There would have been no advantage to the pirates in spreading the information, not while Waln held the upper hand. Now, however, the knowledge was transforming into a threat.

Concisely, as he had rehea.r.s.ed through the dark hours of the night with only the snoring crone for audience, Waln recited an edited version of events. He had to stay close enough to the truth for Longsight to know what he must to help him, but he didn't need to tell all.

For one, Waln didn't need to tell how he'd been panting after the woman like a dog after a b.i.t.c.h in heat.

Instead, the way Waln told the story, Lady Melina had ensorcelled him and made him her slave. Only the threat to his own life had broken the spell, necessitating his mad dash, leaving some-unnamed-valuables in the evil woman's possession.